Today Instagram launched Bolt, a one-to-one visual messaging app for iOS and Android that lets you capture and send photos and videos to friends with just one tap.

Bolt is the first new standalone app from the Instagram team, launching exclusively today in New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa.

Riding the mobile messaging wave, Bolt was built to be fast and simple, with the idea of communicating with people you’re close to, as quickly as possible.

New Bolt users can sign up with a phone number, no email address needed. Once friends are added to a “favourites” list you can send images and videos with a single tap on the screen. You can add text captions and reply directly to messages you receive with a photo.

Once the user swipes away a Bolt message, it’s gone forever.

To some it may be apparent a user experience not dissimilar from Snapchat.

Bolt is available in New Zealand from today, on iOS (iOS 7+) and Android (Ice Cream Sandwich +) devices.